Elizabeth Gilbert - Stern Men

On November 8, a young man from Courne Haven Island, by the name of Jim Burden, set out for a day of lobster fishing. He had meant to fuel up his boat first thing in the morning, but before he could get to the pumps, he found a stranger’s buoys, painted a hideous, garish green, bobbing among his traps. They were the buoys of Ira Pommeroy, from Fort Niles Island. Jim recognized them immediately. And he knew who Ira Pommeroy was. Ira Pommeroy, wife of Rhonda, father of Webster and Conway and John and so on, was the brother of Don Pommeroy. Who was in a hospital in Rockland, learning how to walk again, an ability he had lost after being beaten by Fred Burden. Who was Jim Burden’s father.

Ira Pommeroy had been harassing Fred Burden and young Jim for months, and Jim had had enough of it. Jim Burden had set these traps right off the north coast of Courne Haven only the day before. They were so near Courne Haven that Jim could practically see them from his house. They were in a place where a Fort Niles fisherman had no business. To set those rogue traps, Ira Pommeroy must have come over in the middle of the night. What would drive a man to do that? Didn’t the man ever sleep?

It should be noted that the buoys Ira Pommeroy had set on Jim’s little shoreline were dummies. There were no traps at the end of those lines; there were cement blocks. Ira Pommeroy’s plan was not to take Jim Burden’s lobsters. The plan was to drive Jim Burden nuts, and it worked. Jim, a mild-mannered nineteen-year-old who’d been pretty much intimidated by this lobster war, lost every shred of meekness in an instant and went after Ira Pommeroy. Jim was in a hot rage. He didn’t usually curse, but as he sped his boat over the waves, he said under his breath things like “Damn it, damn it, damn it. Damn him! ”

He got to Fort Niles and set out to look for Ira Pommeroy’s boat. He didn’t know for sure whether he’d recognize it, but he was damn sure set on finding it. He more or less knew his way around the waters near Fort Niles, but he still had a few close calls with rocky ledges he couldn’t spot from behind the throttle. And he wasn’t paying all that much attention to the bottom or to landmarks that would help get him back home. He wasn’t thinking about getting back home. He was looking for any boat belonging to a Fort Niles fisherman.

He scanned the horizon for flocks of seagulls and followed the seagulls to the lobster boats. Whenever he found a boat, he would zoom right up to it, slow down, and peer at it, trying to see who was aboard. He didn’t say anything to the fishermen, and they didn’t say anything to him. They stopped their work and looked at him. What’s that kid up to? What the hell is the matter with that kid’s face? He’s purple, for Christ’s sake.

Jim Burden didn’t say a word. He zoomed off, searching for Ira Pommeroy. He hadn’t planned exactly what he was going to do once he found him, but his thoughts were somewhere along the lines of murder.

Unluckily for Jim Burden, he didn’t think to look for Ira Pommeroy’s boat in the Fort Niles harbor, which is where it sat, bobbing quietly. Ira Pommeroy had taken the day off. He was exhausted from a night spent dropping cement blocks near Courne Haven, and he’d slept in until eight in the morning. While Jim Burden was speeding around the Atlantic looking for Ira, Ira was in bed with his wife, Rhonda, making another son.

Jim Burden went way out. He went much farther out to sea than any lobster boat needs to go. He went past all the pot buoys of any kind. He followed what he thought was a flock of seagulls far, far out to sea, but the seagulls, as he came nearer, vanished. They dissolved into the sky like sugar in hot water. Jim Burden slowed his boat down and looked around. Where was he? He could see Fort Niles Island shimmering in the distance, a pale gray apparition. His anger was now frustration, and even that was beginning to wane, replaced with something like anxiety. The weather was getting bad. The sea was high. The sky was whipped with fast, black clouds, which had come up quickly. Jim wasn’t sure at all where he was.

“Damn it,” Jim Burden said. “Damn him. ”

And then he ran out of gas.

“ Damn it,” he said again, and this time he meant it.

He tried to start up the engine, but there was no doing so. No going anywhere. It hadn’t occurred to him that this could happen. He hadn’t thought about the gas tank.

“Oh, boy,” said nineteen-year-old Jim Burden.

He was now afraid as well as embarrassed. Some fisherman he was. Paying his gas tank no mind. How stupid could you get? Jim got on the radio and put out a staticky call for help. “Help,” he said, “I’m out of gas.” He wasn’t sure if there was a more nautical way to say this. He didn’t know all that much about boating, really. This was the first year he’d been out to haul by himself. He’d worked for years as a sternman for his father, so he thought he knew all about the ocean, but now he realized he’d been a mere passenger before. His dad had taken care of everything, while he’d just done the muscle work in the back of the boat. He hadn’t been paying attention all those years, and now he was alone on a boat in the middle of nowhere.

“Help!” he said into the radio again. Then he remembered the word. “Mayday!” he said. “Mayday!”

The first voice to get back to him was that of Ned Wishnell, and it made young Jim wince. Ned Wishnell was the best fisherman in Maine, people said. Something like this would never happen to Ned Wishnell, to any Wishnell. Jim had been hoping somewhere in the back of his mind that he could get through this without Ned Wishnell’s finding out.

“Is that Jimmy?” Ned’s voice cracked.

“This is the Mighty J, ” Jim replied. He thought it would make him sound more adult to name his boat. But he was immediately embarrassed by the name. The Mighty J! Yeah, right.

“Is that Jimmy?” Ned’s voice came again.

“This is Jimmy,” Jim said. “I’m out of gas. Sorry.”

“Where are you, son?”

“I… uh… don’t know.” He hated to say it, hated to admit it. To Ned Wishnell, of all people!

“Didn’t make that out, Jimmy.”

“I don’t know!” Jim shouted it now. Humiliating. “I don’t know where I am!”

There was silence. Then an unintelligible gargle.

“Didn’t make that out, Ned,” Jim said. He was trying to sound like the older man, imitating his cadence. Trying to maintain some dignity.

“You see any landmarks?” Ned asked.

“Fort Niles is, um, maybe two miles to the west,” Jimmy said, but as he said it, he realized he could no longer see that distant island. A fog had come up, and it was growing as dark as evening, although it was only ten in the morning. He didn’t know which way he was pointing.

“Drop your anchor. Stay put,” Ned Wishnell said, and signed off.

Ned found the kid. It took him several hours, but he found Jimmy. He had notified the other fishermen, and they’d all been looking for Jimmy. Even some fishermen from Fort Niles went out to look for Jim Burden. It was terrible weather. On a normal day, everyone would have headed in because of the weather, but they all stayed out, looking for young Jimmy. Even Angus Addams went out looking for Jim Burden. It was the right thing to do. The kid was only nineteen, and he was lost.

But it was Ned Wishnell who found him. How, nobody knew. But the guy was a Wishnell-a gifted fisherman, a hero on the water-so nobody was surprised that he found a small boat in the fog in the big ocean without the faintest clue about where to look. Everyone was accustomed to nautical miracles from Wishnells.

By the time Ned got to the Mighty J, the weather was really rough, and Jim Burden had been pulled-despite his little anchor-far away from where he’d sent his call for help. Not that Jim knew where he’d been in the first place. He heard Ned Wishnell’s boat before he could see it. He heard the motor through the fog.